The Supreme Court Rules: Prisoners Cannot Be Starved
- Noa Sattath
- 5 hours ago
- 3 min read
September 11, 2025
...to ensure that the minimum standards that the state owes to every person held by it, be they despised and contemptible, are maintained even in these difficult days. This is not only because it is the legislature's commandment, but also to preserve the human dignity within us.
To remove any doubt, it should be emphasized that the provision of food of one type or another is not a means of punishment...every prisoner must be provided with food in the quantity and composition appropriate for maintaining their health. That and nothing more.
Justice Daphne Barak Erez in the majority opinion regarding the policy of starving Palestinian security prisoners (emphasis mine)
Dear friend,
We have an exciting update about one of our most challenging cases. In April 2024, in light of statements from government officials and reports from Palestinian security prisoners and their lawyers, ACRI filed a petition to compel the government to provide equal and adequate food to all prisoners, in compliance with international law. This week, the court published its ruling. All three judges determined unanimously that the Israel Prison Service is obligated by law to provide adequate food to prisoners. They ruled 2-1 that the State is not fulfilling its legal obligation, and that it must take immediate steps to ensure that all prisoners are provided with adequate food (the dissenting justice argued that the State was currently fulfilling its legal obligations).
This is a case that we have been pursuing practically since the outbreak of the war. The stakes are high: this policy has had deadly consequences. Prisoners have died, whether as a direct result of malnutrition or because losing a significant amount of weight rapidly made them less able to fight off infections and disease. Moreover, hostages who have returned have testified that they suffered the consequences of boasts by government officials of worsening conditions for Palestinian prisoners.
This was a challenging case, not only because of the subject matter but because of the abuse and harassment faced by ACRI’s staff by the government officials responsible for this policy of starvation and their supporters. Extremist Knesset members and right-wing activists attended the hearings in order to threaten, curse at, and intimidate ACRI’s staff, and to demonstrate their contempt for democracy and the judicial system by disrupting the court proceedings. It should be obvious, but we had to go to the Supreme Court in order to state the fact that access to food cannot be a form of punishment and that prisoners, regardless of the reason why they are in prison, cannot be starved. A policy of starving prisoners contravenes Israeli and international law. The justices who heard the case agreed.
ACRI’s staff is indomitable. In the face of all of these issues they continued to push forward, never losing sight of the fact that legally and morally we were in the right. It took nearly a year and a half for the court system to state the obvious, that a policy of starving prisoners is unacceptable. In the meantime, hunger and starvation are widespread in Gaza. We will not rest, but we are savoring this victory and hope that it is one of many that will advance human rights and change the current state of affairs.
Your encouragement and support of us and our work have been invaluable throughout this case. Thank you for being our partners in affecting change. Donate now.